I sort of fell into St Moritz.
My Dad’s best friend Jonathan had always wanted to see the great White Turf horse race – the only horse race that takes place on a frozen lake. And so, his lovely girlfriend, Alejandra, had booked the trip for his 60th birthday present with Dad. Dad’s guest dropped out last minute, and so I squeezed myself in as the replacement plus one.
It was all going so well, until we landed in Switzerland. There we found out that the race day had been cancelled because the ice wasn’t thick enough for horses to gallop on. Bloody global warming, we grumbled as we drove out of Zurich airport.
Still, who needs horses when you have humans t o entertain you? When people turn into tourists, they seem to go a little off-beat. (I know from my days as a tour guide).
Tourist ask stupid questions, they eat things they wouldn’t normally smell, screw people they would usually avoid, and do things that would humiliate them at home. The mentality being, ‘Screw it, we’re neveeeer going to see these people again.”
My first strange encounter was on the first night in the St Moritz hotel restroom.
I was washing my hands when a woman with cow-patterned trousers came in and started tugging on her trouser fly.
“My zipper is broken!” the woman squealed as she tugged and pulled at the zip. I pretended to be too occupied with singing Happy Birthday in my head whilst rinsing my fingers to notice her. “Could you help me with my zipper?”
There was no chance I was going to tug on a tiny zip near a woman’s groin, so with wet hands , I ran away.
Things got more peculiar in the hotel spa. It turns out the saunas had a ‘no textile’ rule. Alejandra and I got on well, but we weren’t at the stage in our relationship to see each other naked. So we compromised the rules slightly by hiding behind our towels. We went into one misty sauna that was dark and smelt of rocks. Sitting close together was a mother and her teenage son, they were both on their phones which was weird enough, but then we saw that they were eating apples. Apples in a sauna…naked?
CRUNCH…………… CRUNCH…………..CRUNCH…………
I couldn’t stop staring at them. Were they aware that they were taking in my sweaty skin cells with each mouthful?
To be fair, our group wasn’t the ‘most’ normal. We had, after all, come to Switzerland in February with no intention of skiing. (You can read about how I swipe left on men who ski). Still, we were keen to not feel left out, and so for Saturday lunch we went to a restaurant in the mountains.
We rode the cable car up and began ‘the trek’ with a paper map in hand. It was only twenty minutes, but you could have been fooled into believing we were climbing Mt Kilimanjaro. We even took photos next to the signs that told us the number of minutes left to the restaurant.
Sweaty, delirious, and dying for a drink, we finally arrived at the restaurant – surviving the hike. And then we realised we had to get back down again.
The Sunday was the race day aka White Turf. Even though the horses were not racing, the event was still going ahead.
Being amongst The White Turf crowd was like stepping into a Jilly Cooper novel. Long hair dangled from fur hats. Faces were made up of plump cheeks and inflated flicked-up lips. There was a man in a giant green fur coat as if he had skinned the Grinch. And a woman, dressed head to toe in red, lounged in a deck chair with her diamonds sparkling in the sun. I had thought my Sweaty Betty sheepskin pullover was plush enough, but even the dogs were better dressed than me.
Without any actual horse races, the event was mostly a dining affair. There was an oyster bar, a cheese table and free-flowing champagne. As a sober vegan, I was very aware that I was wasting a seat.
A live band started to play Purple Rain, odd choice, but Alejandra and I began to dance to it, (as much as you can dance to Purple Rain). We thought others would join in, but they just stood in their fur and stared. I suppose they thought we were strange.
But screw it, we’re never going to see those people again.
THE QUACK 